hckr.fyi // thoughts

We Don't Go Back to the Paywall

by Michael Szul on

There is an excellent folk horror documentary called Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. In the documentary, several folk historians, writers, critics, and even occultists talk about the folk horror genre, it's influence, and it's importance in modern culture.

Pencils Moving in Two Different Directions

by Michael Szul on

We all build our own mythologies, and those mythologies are based on past experiences that shape not just what we want the future to be, but also what we want the past to be.

Fermented Chatbots and Artificial History

by Michael Szul on

In late 2017, I came up with a domain name off the top of my head - botsandbeer.com. I was heavily into chatbot development... and more than a little into the craft beer scene.

Richard Metzger Thinks Everything Sucks on the Internet

by Michael Szul on

The aforementioned Tango Song was something I purchased on a whim. My physical Crowley collection is light, and I normally don't indulge in the ultra-obscure items. I have been a little intrigued of Crowley from a literary perspective—or at least his literary ambitions.

The Tango Song of Aleister Crowley

by Michael Szul on

Aleister Crowley was never as influential on me as he was on some people. Although I had Magick Book IV, I think I was 5 years younger than when most—obsessed by British punk/post-punk—poured over his volumes of work.

These Records Sound Better in an Open Room

by Michael Szul on

Although I won't say that I collect vinyl records, I can certainly tell you that my vinyl record collection has grown over the course of the last 12-18 months. I never had a record player in my youth, but my father and uncle both did—with an enormous collection of records.

Resolving the Decades

by Michael Szul on

How many New Year's resolutions have been broken over the course of several decades? I'm guilty of this all the time. Although I've made steady improvements year over year in my life, the hard defined New Year's resolution is always something that we approach as a binary in terms of success or failure.

Putting the World on a Solid Foundation

by Michael Szul on

When Apple TV+ released the first season of Foundation, I realized that I hadn't read Isaac Asimov's Foundation series at all—only being familiar with his robot tales.

Having New Thoughts

by Michael Szul on

I never really paid much attention to who Mitch Horowitz was until Douglas Rushkoff had him on a live special on Team Human. He seemed reasonably intelligent and had a good grasp on the occult.

Closing Chapters

by Michael Szul on

Yesterday I took my black gi from Kajukenbo and all my Kaj and Aikido belts and put them in the trash can. I studied Aikido in my 20's and did quite well at it until my progress was derailed by a relationship.

The Very Beginning of Madness

by Michael Szul on

When I first dove into the Internet I had started an ecommerce site during a time when you had to type "online bookstore" into Altavista in order to find Amazon on the web. People often laugh when I recollect being 16-17 years old and mailing cash to Amazon for books. For the first few years I even received free Christmas gifts from them for being a frequent shopper.

And All the Keys That Remain

by Michael Szul on

I mentioned previously that I pulled over a number of Codepunk and Apotheosis articles under hckr fyi to mostly represent a best of, and a consolidation of various writing projects over the decades. I was in the process of doing the same thing for Key 23 when I realized... there really wasn't much to bring over.

What Apotheosis Hath Wrought

by Michael Szul on

I promised myself that this new blog would not tetter off into the past with immersive odes to nostalgia. That is still the case; however, I do feel the need to close the book on a number of projects, and in doing so, consolidate some of those projects under the current domain name.

Uncoiling a Meaningful Art of Listening

by Michael Szul on

Coil's earlier work is harsh, masculine, and profound—a band interested in only making music for themselves, but there was always a hint of something more esoteric. This became more pronounced with the release of Love's Secret Domain and by the time the band entered their Moon Musick phase, that hint was a much fuller halucinatory experience.

More Than Two Decades Have Gone By

by Michael Szul on

As I start writing this, it's January 2nd, 2024. It will likely be published a few days later. The year has just turned over to a new number and tomorrow (January 3rd) will represent my 45th revolution around the sun.

Continuous Deployment with GitHub and Powershell on IIS

by Michael Szul on

One area that is a large focus for me in my work life has been DevOps automations—specifically integrating DevOps with older, legacy and potentially monolithic solutions.

Get On Board the AI Hype Train

by Michael Szul on

Two articles that I came across a week ago (that I'm not going to link to)... one referenced going inside a Microsoft sprint to add ChatGPT to all Microsoft 365 products and another talked about how the Meta (Facebook) CTO said that he and Mark Zuckerberg were primarily working on artificial intelligence (AI) products.

JSON Sucks; Quit Lying to Yourself

by Michael Szul on

The TLDR Newsletter linked to a podcast transcript today about XML versus JSON. The podcast episode was an interview with Douglas Crockford, so you can imagine what side he fell on.

There is Nothing on the Internet

by Michael Szul on

There is nothing on the Internet anymore... which sounds weird because there is more stuff on the Internet than ever before.

The Artist is not the Art

by Michael Szul on

There are people that hate J.K. Rowling. I'm not going to get into the debate. She wrote _Harry Potter_, made a lot of money, and became famous. Famous people are scrutinized for every word and action. But Rowling is also not a civil rights activist nor a doctor.

Burning MVP Bridges (and Other Tales)

by Michael Szul on

I used to blog consistently. At peak, I was probably producing one high quality blog post a week on technology. I also co-produced one podcast and completely handled another.

Gibson

by Michael Szul on

Updated the review page to include book reviews for William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy.

Voodoo Gods in Cyberspace

by Michael Szul on

At the end of Neuromancer, the Wintermute artificial intelligence (with the help of Henry Case and Molly Millions) broke down the firewall preventing Wintermute from reaching the other artificial intelligence—the namesake of the book... Neuromancer.

Welcome Back to the Sprawl

by Michael Szul on

Some of you might be wondering where the original Codepunk podcast is. There was a lot of talk about building a Codepunk space in virtual reality (using Facebook Horizon... or Meta Horizon... or whatever it's called now)...

This Blog is Still Alive

by Michael Szul on

I told you this blog was mostly for me. No, it's not dead.

I Don't Get My Vaccine Advice from Joe Rogan

by Michael Szul on

Joe Rogan is a comedian. My partner and I saw him in Washington, D.C. probably about a decade back. Hilarious. Rogan's comedic style is absurdist. He attempts to use absurd language and scenarios to draw out the idiocy in the mundane and to poke fun at observed structures in society.

The Russian Internet

by Michael Szul on

The story of the Russian Internet is a story that reaches as far back as early dissendent papers and the birth of telecoms in the region. It's an interwoven story of the control of information from paper to sound waves to Internet packets aimed at philosophy, conspiracy, and journalism.

Are You Serious?

by Michael Szul on

I'm happy to see this entry for Apotheosis—not just because it's the 10th entry, but because it wraps up the Mondo 2000 3-parter, which followed on the heels of the Boing Boing 3-parter. Revisiting both publications/communities just reminds me too much about how the edgier (experimental would be a more appropriate term) aspects of cyberculture quickly fell to commercialism, leaving those in the community stranded.

Zines are Awesome

by Michael Szul on

I've been wanting to launch a zine for a while now, so here we go. I'll talk more about it in a longer post later. Right now, I just felt like dumping it into cyberspace for the bots to pick up.

Free Assange Even If You Don't Like Him

by Michael Szul on

This podcast episode does a good job of reflecting on Julian Assange. With Assange back in the headlines now that extradition is coming, it's important to understand that you often have the separate the person from the act, much the same way you might separate the author from the work.

A Whole New Year

by Michael Szul on

The meme that I'm seeing circulating the most is that 2022 is more like 2020 Two with the raging of COVID and the spread of the Omicron variant. The rule for 2022 should be fuck your politics.

A Year of Transition

by Michael Szul on

Yesterday I was going through my GitHub starred projects on my phone using the beta lists feature to organize them. In that process, I culled the stars, reducing them from ~530 to 237 (as of this writing). I posted the accomplishment to Phil Eaton's excellent Discord.

Creepshow

by Michael Szul on

Horror for the holidays isn't so strange. I might be delayed in posting this, but at least I can take solace in the fact that Creepshow did come out of with a holiday special.

The Ministry for the Blockchain

by Michael Szul on

I had heard bits and pieces about Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, but it was mostly sitting on my wish list as something I'd get to in the future until the Exponential View reading group picked it for their book club. I decided to put some of my other reading on hold and dove in since I felt it would provide some good debate and discussion with other thinkers from across various industries.

Selling the New Edge

by Michael Szul on

If you're first exposure to Mondo 2000's narrative of the Internet was with The Cyberpunk Handbook you might have looked no further—sending it to the trash heap—not even fit for recycling. But those who grew up and explored the Internet during Mondo's days didn't live in reverse like we're doing with this look back at cyber history. The handbook was the final push of California cyberpunk satire, but Mondo did lived on the edge for a few years, much like the earlier zine version of Boing Boing.

The Next Great Hobbyist Revolution

by Michael Szul on

I want to take a trip down memory lane to a whitepaper I wrote over a decade ago. It was originally titled Ruby on Rails Death to All Hobbyists. I wrote it near the peak of Ruby on Rails popularity, and it was an analysis of hobbyist languages and hype versus proven scalability and development processes.

How to Be a Cyberpunk

by Michael Szul on

In the last post, we had some fun reliving a little early 2000's Internet culture, but what we're doing here is digging deeper into the roots of cyberspace. That brief interlude was me reminiscing of a time when I was highly involved in an underground culture, while also checking in on an old friend and his work...

Catching Up to the End of October

by Michael Szul on

I'm behind a bit on the October/Horror Movies/Craft Beer posts—mostly because there was a run on pumpkin beer, but also because I exhausted myself with a few side projects and kept falling asleep halfway through the movies.

The Web 1.0 Gig Economy was Sally's Nephew

by Michael Szul on

Bear with me, I'm going to take a trip down memory lane before getting to the point. It gets a little ranty too. Grab yourself a cup of coffee. Earlier in my career—after I left the first consulting company I worked for—I did a little freelance work in web site design and web site building at a time just far enough past the Dot-Com bubble bursting to have a market flooded with freelancers. If you thought web application development was a hard sell, try selling web sites. This was pre-SquareSpace, etc.

Technical Interviews Still Suck

by Michael Szul on

I've been on both the giving and the receiving end of interviews in my career as a software engineer and engineering manager, and I've been privy to a great many styles of interviews.

Seance

by Michael Szul on

I picked up a very, very local craft beer from a farm brewery (which I'll leave unnamed) and it was stuffed to the rim with clove as a spice and not much pumpkin at all. Terrible.

Proximity in Virtual Reality

by Michael Szul on

When discussing virtual reality (VR), there is a specific aspect of design involved—whether world design, production design, or application design. These environments are not exempt from the same design principles available in 2D design environments.

Supply Chain Beer Woes

by Michael Szul on

Have the supply chain issues ruined beer distribution as well?

Slasher... The Series

by Michael Szul on

There's a pretty good horror series on Shudder called Slasher. It started out on Chiller before moving to Netflix and eventually ended up on Shudder.

Fast Recursive Delete in Powershell

by Michael Szul on

Dropping a quick note on Powershell, which is a powerful language with a terrible syntax.

Hello Mary Lou

by Michael Szul on

While I await and finish season 2 and 3 of Creepshow, I'll be able to drop in on a few other horror favorites this month between viewings... or am I viewing Creepshow in between horror favorites? One of those.

Staying Up to Date With the Creep

by Michael Szul on

Moving from movies to television (or whatever streaming television is considered), we're going to take a look at the new season of Creepshow.

Ginger Snaps at the Last Drive In

by Michael Szul on

On the second day of my 31 days of horror movies and craft beer, I revisited a favorite of mine Ginger Snaps.

Lords of Salem and Roadsmary's Baby

by Michael Szul on

Rob Zombie has carved himself out a nice niche and a cult following, and as someone who was wealthy way before he started directing, he really doesn't need to please anyone. He just needs to break even of funding.

October 2021

by Michael Szul on

It's October 1st; You know what that means?

Geminispace on Hold. Maybe.

by Michael Szul on

I'm writing this mostly because I need another blog post to check the margin between posts on the listing.

Did I Need Another Blog?

by Michaael Szul on

The answer is yes. That's the TL;DR.The long answer (promise it won't be too long) is that I needed to be able to write whatever I wanted unattached from my personal/professional profile.

Pizza, Beer, and Computer Viruses

by Michael Szul on

When a company's network gets compromised by a virus, it can set off the panic alarms throughout the workplace. Of course Internet access being a must for all companies (every company is an IT company), means that exposure and risk are both high with the single biggest thread being the human element.

Faceless on the Internet

by Michael Szul on

Many my age still remember the years of personal bulletin board systems (BBS) when the Internet was young (and more explicitly tied to the telecoms). Eventually, cyberspace emerged as a collective of protocols with BBS, IRC chat channels, and UseNet newsgroups filling out additional communication channels. I remember following newly created UseNet newsgroups dedicated to the very first SciFi Channel original programming (long before it became whatever SyFy is supposed to stand for).

A Happy Mutant Reading

by Michael Szul on

I'm sure you're tired of hearing my opinion on Boing Boing at this point, so you'll be happy to know that this is the last Codepunk post and Apotheosis episode on the subject.

Logins are Hard

by Michael Szul on

With advances in technology being so profound over the last few decades, security has become—and continues to be—an ever important issue for every business, project, or hobby (and even home automation) taking the steps to bring their offering to the next level.

Virtual Reality is Virtually Ready

by Michael Szul on

With the launch of season 6 of the Codepunk podcast, we'll be coalescing around a single theme since we'll be producing less episodes at a higher quality with accompanying video inside of virtual reality.

The Boing Boing Controversies

by Michael Szul on

Although the history of Boing Boing paints a picture of geek chic with a thriving community and an almost playful cyber-indulgence, the blog (and those running the blog) is not without the occasional head-turning controversy...

A History of Boing Boing

by Michael Szul on

Boing Boing was a zine before it became a web site, and although zines were not exclusive to the counterculture and cyberculture eras, the proliferation of zines reached its apex in the late 80's/early 90's.

Save Time with Scaffolding Using Yeoman

by Michael Szul on

In most of my current projects (both for work and for pleasure), I use very similar tools, frameworks, configurations, etc. With Node.JS applications...

One Billion Seconds from Now

by Michael Szul on

One billion seconds is a phrase that has accumulated usage over the course of our most recent evolution of memes. Representing a little over 31.5 years (which isn't nearly as fancy as saying one billion seconds)...

Giving the Finger to the Bird

by Michael Szul on

You can blame Ben Brown for this one. I mentioned Ben in the previous Apotheosis post. He's a current Microsoft engineer that works on the Bot Framework Composer, but made a name for himself...

Diversity in the Technology Industry

by Michael Szul on

For a significant time now being a software engineer—being a technology worker—has given us the impression that we are not labor. That we are not the working class.

Dreaming of Gopher's Past with the Gemini Protocol

by Michael Szul on

I miss the Gopher protocol. That's an odd statement to make because the Gopher protocol wasn't successful long-term and it had quite a few drawbacks, but the Gopher protocol was an Internet protocol...

Cyberia Old and New

by Michael Szul on

Every generation—once they reach around 40 years of age—starts to think about how things were when they grew up, and we all come to the same conclusion about how our childhood was better.

What We Learned from Max Headroom

by Michael Szul on

Modern culture siphons value from past generations in order to pre-package large quantities of the next big trend for quick financial extraction. The result of this is the raiding of authenticity from past generations into a pale meme of itself. Much of the modern generation seems to live off of memes, YouTube video clips, and recycled collage advertisements that fake and feed nostalgia.

Newsletters are Walling Off Your Freedom

by Michael Szul on

I often forget a lot of tech pundits come from the finance sector and it's not so much an expertise in technology as it is an expertise...

The Good and Bad of Instagram

by Michael Szul on

I mentioned recently that I took the time to remove applications like Twitter and LinkedIn from my phone in order...

Human-Centered Programming

by Michael Szul on

Typically when we talk about economic sectors, the focus is generally on the public and private sectors, and most don't consider if there is anything else...

Clean Up Your Online Accounts

by Michael Szul on

I hit the wrong key again. Staring at the screen with the twins making noise in the background, I'm wondering if I can edit out that part and make it a seamless cut, or if I'm going to have to overlay a transition.

Communicate with People Instead of Networks

by Michael Szul on

Email. We used email. I slowly came to the realization that I hadn't done this much recently, feeling like email was a burden of communication instead...

Facebook's New Horizon

by Michael Szul on

This is the third article this year dealing with Facebook. I don't work for Facebook. Promise. In fact, for the most part, I don't even...

Shallow Minds on Deep Work

by Michael Szul on

Cal Newport, unfortunately, slots right in with the rest of them. I was recommended Deep Work by several people that I highly...

What Does Quantum Computing Say about Free Will?

by Michael Szul on

This isn't going to be a hard science piece, so turn off your computer if you had high expectations. This is more a philosophical debate...

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x12 - The True Cost of Bitcoin

by Michael Szul on

A few weeks ago I divested myself of all my Bitcoin and used a fraction of the proceeds to buy a computer. You can watch me unbox the new computer on YouTube...

Ultralearning How to Sell Snake Oil

by Michael Szul on

I read a lot of book about a variety of subjects, but as someone who studied clinical psychology and philosophy in college, I also like to read about the metaphysical layer on top of some of these subjects...

Moving from Camtasia to Shotcut

by Michael Szul on

We record videos. Surprised? I know. It's not like we talk about them constantly. Seriously, though it's been a fun ride building out the Codepunk YouTube channel to its current state.

Living at Work

by Michael Szul on

With the COVID-19 pandemic, most on my team (and indeed my entire organization) have been working from home like the rest of the world.

Why Are We Still Talking about SOLID?

by Michael Szul on

Funny story. During one of the last technical interviews I had, I was asked what SOLID was. After I answered that it was a philosophy in object-oriented programming for single use objects...

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x11 - Conversation-Driven Development (CDD)

by Michael Szul on

The origin of this newsletter was that it was going to be about chatbots and craft beer. We ran out of chatbot content by about the fourth or fifth issue, but the newsletter evolved into a narrative, thematic newsletter about the future of computing...

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x10 - Understanding Pace Layers

by Michael Szul on

All the way back in the first issue of this year, I wrote about GitHub's Arctic Code Vault in what would truly be a turning point for this newsletter. That issue marked a future period of consistency focused on a singular thematic approach that we've continued to this day.

Storing Sensitive Data for your DevOps Pipeline (in GitHub)

by Michael Szul on

Never check your passwords and secrets into source control. We've all been told this plenty of times; Yet for some reason, people keep doing it.

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x09 - Is the City Dead?

by Michael Szul on

With the pandemic still in full effect, it's clear to see that the virus propagates more quickly in areas of high density. New York City did not fair well, while areas like Wuhan, London, and Singapore required strict controls. Even as the curve flattened in some areas, and the economies opened up, travel and density saw the slow creep of COVID-19 cases rise.

Why I Love Lightning Talks

by Michael Szul on

Lightning talks are often misunderstood and handled poorly by conference organizers. They are seen as a consolation prize.

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x08 - Are We in a VR Winter?

by Michael Szul on

It wasn't that long ago that people believed Virtual Reality and VR headsets were dead in the water. The popularity of the Oculus—and the emergence of the Oculus Quest as a wireless—option seems to have quelled that talking point, but now we've reached another moment of knee-jerk reaction by pundits and analysts...

Solving Remote Work Issues with Documentation

by Michael Szul on

The long-term resolution to this remote work stressor lies in appropriate documentation. We've talked about this before, and even went into details with...

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x07 - A Short History of Alternate Reality Games

by Michael Szul on

I used to review a decent amount of books on Amazon a few decades back. For a while there, my ranking was pretty high. As a result, I would often get researched and emailed by authors looking to give away a free book for a review. This died down after a while, but every so often I get a random request or a random book in the mail.

What Am I Doing with All This Content

by Michael Szul on

Why do people read Codepunk? What makes it different? More importantly How can it make a difference on its own? I'm hoping to answer these questions...

Conversation Analysis in Chatbots

by Michael Szul on

During our last conversational software post, we talked about the different types of conversations - Pairs, stories, therapy, etc. This is because conversation develops different patterns depending on the context, reason, and the expected outcome.

My Monorepo Broke My CI/CD (GitHub Actions with a Monorepository)

by Michael Szul on

The biggest problem with a monorepository is that it's good for development but bad for deployment. Why do I say this? In a traditional CI/CD setup...

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x06 - Facebook's Hardware Gamble

by Michael Szul on

Remember the Facebook phone? Me neither. In fact, I was just about to sit down to start writing this email when the thought of it popped into my head. Here I was about to write an email about Facebook's foray into hardware, and I almost forget their first disaster.

Monorepository Example (A GitHub Migration)

by Michael Szul on

With this monorepository set-up we're able to run each of the applications, while utilizing the common package, and we can make updates to the common...

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x05 - The Future of Remote Work and the Flipped Workplace

by Michael Szul on

There's been a lot of talk about working remotely and the future of remote work lately, and I don't want to feel like I'm piling on the trendy bandwagon by repeating a lot of the same information, so this email will focus on both the approach-ability of remote work, and dive deeper into what makes remote work possible—both from a technological and a philosophical standpoint—and what the future might truly hold.

Monorepository vs. Multirepository

by Michael Szul on

I'm old enough to remember when monorepositories were "in" the first time around. As code became more complicated, best practices dictated the uncoupling...

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x04 - Sorry, but I Have To Write About the Coronavirus

by Michael Szul on

It usually takes me a week or two to fully flesh out one of these issues. As I've started writing this the Microsoft MVP Summit (a conference for people who received the Microsoft MVP award during the year) has just been canceled.

Going Remote (Even for the Experienced)

by Michael Szul on

How is everyone doing with the work-from-home mandate? In a conversation with executive leadership at my organization, when asked how I was handling the new work arrangement...

What Types of Conversations are There? Pairs vs. Stories vs. Interviews vs.Therapy

by Michael Szul on

Before we get to truly defining conversational software we need to look at the different types of conversation.

🤖 + 🍺 Bots and Beer 2x03 - Max Headroom and the Culture Killers

by Michael Szul on

Re-reading the title of this issue, I realize that Max Headroom and the Culture Killers sounds like a band name. That's actually fitting since the focus of this issue in part centers on how financial extraction has killed innovative, quality art, especially in the music (and entertainment) industry.

What Do We Mean By Conversation? A Software Approach

by Michael Szul on

We're going to be talking a lot about "talking" in these next few posts, so it's important that we're all on the same page about what we mean by 'talking' and "conversation"—especially when we discuss how it relates to software.

You're Thinking About Chatbots All Wrong

by Michael Szul on

Almost two years, I brought up the lack of a killer application when it came to chatbots. That killer app still doesn't exist.

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